


On Your Skin

by Lavender_Menace



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Canonical Character Death, Cutting, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Keechie worships Klaus, Mentioned Allison Hargreeves, Mentioned Diego Hargreeves, Mentioned Luther Hargreeves, Mentioned Number Five | The Boy, Mentioned Vanya Hargreeves, Rambling, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Scars, Season 2 compliant, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Semi-Chronological, Suicidal Thoughts, Tattoos, graphic depictions of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26105491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavender_Menace/pseuds/Lavender_Menace
Summary: Klaus' unhealthy behaviors from the age of fourteen onward, and how everyone responds to this differently
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone, Klaus Hargreeves & Keechie, Klaus Hargreeves & The Hargreeves
Comments: 8
Kudos: 91





	On Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

> this is a kind of "Dead Dove Do Not Eat" situation, if you're triggered by self-harm don't read this

Klaus's umbrella tattoo has been crisscrossed by straight white scars since they were fourteen. 

In her book Vanya had chalked it up to yet another act of rebellion. By the time it was published Klaus had stopped talking to all of them, he'd never bother to clarify.

Luther had called him weak. The older they got the more it seemed like every time Luther opened his mouth their father came out.

It was too much for Diego, too sensitive of an issue to approach as a teenager, and ancient history by the time they'd all reached adulthood. He stayed quiet out of a combination of awkwardness and respect for Klaus's privacy. Sometimes he still thought of it when his brother was being particularly self-destructive, but the subject never came up.

Allison had never commented, writing it off as another piece of fucked up background noise in their already fucked up lives. She got herself out as soon as she could and thought about her childhood as little as possible. If Klaus’ scars looked anything at all like hers she never allowed herself to dwell on it. Klaus was the self destructive sibling, it had nothing to do with her. They had nothing in common. 

Ben had noticed them the day it had happened. When the lines had been deep and red and wrapped shoddily in stolen gauze. He and Klaus had argued viciously, two sharp voices echoing throughout the halls of the Academy. After that conversation Klaus had ignored him for a week straight. Sometimes Ben brought it up anyway, Klaus never did manage to escape that. The cuts were just one more step on the path that Ben was forced to watch his brother take, and later, as a captive audience, he would be forced to witness much worse. It was enough to make him wish that he'd done more to intervene when he'd had the chance. Klaus always insisted that he'd done his best.

Five was gone before the marks had ever appeared.

Klaus doesn't talk about it. He has a lot of scars, some that he put on his body himself, some that came from accidents, some that came from other people. He has a deep dimple on his thigh that came from being shot in the leg when he was twelve. Their father had simply nodded at him as he bled in the infirmary, looked away, and proceeded to lecture his siblings about what would happen if they allowed themselves to be distracted while out on a mission. Klaus made a good example for what not to do.

Klaus had run away when he was sixteen, less than a month after Ben died. After that he stopped really remembering where his injuries came from. Every sensation became a jagged euphoric blur, he had a tattoo of a cherry blossom on his left thigh that he didn’t remember getting either. 

These things just seemed to happen to him. 

And as the years passed the short straight scars on his arms and legs had faded, replaced by scrapes, and bruises, and track marks. 

———————————————--

Once in 1960, just after he landed, Klaus had pressed the side of his palm against a hot stove and clenched his teeth. 

_ Hello _ . 

He'd listened to Ben as he'd screamed at him and did nothing but press harder, allowing the white hot pain to race up his arm into the core of his being, to drown out the agony of withdrawal. To drown out the screams. Behind Ben a greek chorus of anonymous dead wailed on, their voices radio static to the agony. 

The entire incident had lasted less than a minute and as he'd curled up and cried on the delightfully retro linoleum of his patron’s house Ben had asked him  _ why _ .

Klaus never really knew how to answer those kinds of questions.

A year later Keechie ran a reverent finger up the ladder of scars that decorated Klaus’s inner thigh, up and around to circle the cherry blossom, and then further across his back to rest on the shrapnel scar that tore across his bony shoulder. He’d asked  _ why _ unintentionally echoing the ghost of Klaus’s brother.

Klaus had simply run his own hand _ goodbye _ along the short surgical scar on Keechie’s lower abdomen and muttered something about pain and storytelling. In 2019 it would have been trite, but Keechie took it as gospel. 

By the next week Destiny’s Children all muttered his words amongst themselves. 

Everyone carried their life’s pain within their own body, it manifested in different ways for different people. 

In 1963 Klaus fell headfirst off the wagon and into a liquor store, and then right into Allison’s new house. It had felt good, comforting, to return to his old standby. He had his family again, he had alcohol, Dave had punched him in the face. David Katz was going to die. 

By the time they made it to the farmhouse to stop the apocalypse Ben was gone, Dave had enlisted, Kennedy was dead, and Klaus had a long ladder of short red cuts running up the top of his left thigh. They stopped the apocalypse, but Dave had enlisted, and Ben was still gone. Kennedy could rot for all he cared. He barely had it in him to care about the apocalypse.

Surrounded by his remaining family Klaus had never felt so alone.

But he stood, and fought, and held tight to what was left of his family.

He’d wear the pain on his skin later. 

**Author's Note:**

> again please take care of yourself, sorry that this has no real resolution.   
> I posted this so that I could stop looking at it


End file.
